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Category Archives: Fight For The Future

Nuclear Hotseat, is a weekly international news magazine on all things anti-nuclear. it is Hosted and Produced by Libbe HaLevy,
Each week, she provides news, interviews, humor , commentary and perspective on all aspects of the nuclear issue. In continuous production since three months after the Fukushima disaster began in 2011, the show is downloaded in 58 countries on six continents and have received as many as half a million downloads on a single episode.

In 1979, Libbe HaLevy went east to visit friends and ended up trapped one mile from the leaking nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island. This harrowing, deeply compassionate and surprisingly humorous book follows her through decades of Post-Traumatic Stress, failed Broadway aspirations and successful personal healing to her current empowered position as producer and host of Nuclear Hotseat.

“Yes, I Glow in the Dark!” reveals the human side of what happens in the aftermath of a major nuclear accident – the very thing nuclear industry “experts” promised us could never happen and now has occurred not once, but three times. Yes, I Glow in the Dark! is a cautionary tale, a fascinating memoir and a practical handbook for those who wish to take action on this crucial issue.

Last Night, I watched President Obama give his final State of the Union address. I expected him to talk at length about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Instead, the President said just 67 words about the deal because he knows it’s become hugely unpopular with people from across the political spectrum.

We have the momentum to stop this — but corporations and special interests will be pouring money and influence into DC to get it passed any way they can.

There are just 3 weeks until President Obama intends to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). After that, Congress can ratify the treaty at any time.

The good news is that last night’s State of the Union address was the clearest sign yet that we have the power to stop the TPP. During the speech, President Obama talked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership for just 28 seconds. He said all of 67 words. And when he was done, only his cabinet stood to clap.

The lackluster response underscores what we’ve been hearing from allies in Washington, DC: right now there just aren’t enough votes to pass the TPP.

But the bad news is that the the State of the Union was just the beginning of the final push to approve the TPP. Soon, the MPAA, the Chamber of Commerce, and other powerful special interest groups will be pouring money into lobbying efforts to undermine our the democratic process and push the TPP through however they can.

We need to act now to get as many members of Congress on the record opposing the TPP as possible before the lobbyists and campaign contributions tip the scales.

In November, we finally got to read the full text of the TPP, and it is worse than we thought. It reads like a wish list for the most powerful companies — giving Facebook, Comcast, Wal-Mart, and Monsanto the policies they’ve always wanted.

It contains extreme copyright provisions that will lead to a more restricted, expensive, and censored Internet.1 It threatens democracy and national sovereignty by letting corporations sue governments in secret tribunals to undermine our basic rights.2

The fact that members of Congress didn’t stand up to applaud when President Obama spoke about the TPP last night speaks volumes. It says that right now, Congress is on the fence — which means all the activism, the calls, emails, and protests, have been making an impact. Activism is the reason that this morning Senator John Thune, said the TPP is, “on life support.”

But we know that can change all too quickly. Remember how much momentum we had against CISA? We’ve learned to always go big or go home, and that every single call and email matters.

We CAN stop the TPP — but we’re going to need to step it up in the coming weeks to stave off the White House’s renewed push. So take action and send an email today, and most importantly forward this email to your friends and family and share on social media to sound the alarm.

Next, it goes to a conference committee between the House and Senate. National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden warned that Cisa should be scrapped because, it will allow the government to collect sensitive personal data unchecked.

Apple is against it and, a group of university professors specializing in tech law, many from the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy, sent an open letter to the Senate, urging them not to pass the bill. The bill, they wrote, “would fatally undermine the Freedom of Information Act (Foia)”. Read More About It Here!

“Bad news” – From Our Friends at Fight for The Future:

Despite the fact that nearly every major tech company and security expert has come out against it, Congress is still rushing toward a vote on CISA, and the numbers are not looking good. The House Intelligence chief is claiming that CISA will pass “overwhelmingly,” despite the massive public outcry.

It pains me to say this, but CISA is going to become law unless we go all out right now and every single person getting this does everything in their power to stop it and their phones ring off the hook.

If you’re still catching up, CISA is the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which is one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation in the Internet’s history. It sets the precedent for what the Internet is used for into the future. It would effectively give the government full access to all of our information to use as they wish, end privacy policies, and make all of us more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

CISA would allow spy agencies like the NSA to collect even more of your personal data and then share it with dozens of other government agencies, all the way down to local police, authorizing them to use it for an absurdly wide range of purposes that have nothing to do with “cybersecurity,” including investigating “fake” id’s.

Worse, it will literally do nothing to stop the types of high profile cyber attacks that Congress is using to justify it. So we get less privacy AND less security, while giant companies like Target, Experian, and Sony will get legal immunity that lets them on the hook when they fail to protect our data.

No matter what happens, we’ve put up a hell of a fight. Together we put the fear of the Internet into the largest tech companies in the U.S. and got them to take a stand against this bill. Now we need to bring it home.

We at Fight for the Future are working around the clock on this right now. Several of us are en route to Washington, DC as I write this and we’ll be participating in an awesome protest outside Congress TONIGHT at 6:30pm EST with giant light up signs.

From our Friends at Fight for the Future:

This is the week. Congress is about to create a seismic rupture in the Internet.

CISA is coming up for final vote sometime today or tomorrow. If it passes, we’ll be more vulnerable to hacks as companies shift responsibility for preventing them away to the government. Companies will continue to leave the door open for thieves to get your information, including your bank information and Social Security number. On top of that, all your data will be automatically shared with 7 government agencies, including the NSA and local police.

They’re trying to ignore that millions of people have already called on Congress to stop CISA. And, that they have no business passing it.

The other side wants us to get sick of taking action. They want to wear us down until we give up. We can’t give up at this final juncture. The Intelligence Committee, full of the Congresspeople who take the most money from the Defense Industry, is hell bent on passing a “cybersecurity” bill in some form. They don’t care what it does or says, even if it means creating more vulnerabilities across the Internet and breaking it.

This is corruption. The Defense industry cares about profit as much as the next industry. But, their pockets are very, very deep. They’ve bought out politicians to do their bidding. That’s why it’s convenient that Congress doesn’t understand the Internet and doesn’t know how to address cyber hacks.

Instead of making sure companies use good security, Congress is convinced they should install a massive surveillance law to watch for hacks. Even security experts have roundly condemned the bill for its ineffectiveness, but Congress is so corrupted they don’t care or don’t understand that it won’t work.

Just a few month ago, things were looking really grim. It seemed almost certain that CISA would pass, but since then we’ve unleashed a huge can of whoopass and our campaigns have led to nearly every major tech company in the U.S. speaking out to oppose this bill. Trade groups that represent Google, Facebook, Amazon, Sprint have come out against CISA. Twitter, Yelp, Wikipedia came out opposed too, thanks to you and all the grassroots pressure.

We’ve done all this work because surveillance is the defining issue in our digital age.

We’re in a moment when our data and privacy have become currency. Governments and corporations are fighting over what to do with it, how to pass laws that let them reap profit and power off of it, even when it’s abusive, criminal, or unconstitutional.

We have to make the line in the sand clear. Our data must be protected and can’t be used against us.

Thanks. If you want more info, keep reading — this is a really big one.

– Holmes Wilson, Co-director, Fight for the Future.

Encryption is the basis for all privacy and security online. If your phone or laptop gets stolen, encryption is the only thing protecting your photos and personal information.

Without encryption, your credit card numbers, passwords and online accounts would be accessible to anyone.Encryption is also the only hope that leaders, activists, and journalists have for protection from government spies. It’s that big a deal.

But now, governments are threatening to ban it. Why? Because encryption makes some locks so strong, even governmentscan’t open them – and that lack of control freaks governments out.

Even if we wanted the FBI or local police to be able to access any seized iPhone or encrypted message in an emergency, there’s another problem: you can’t have it both ways. If the government gets a special backdoor, it’s only a matter of time before criminals figure it out, and then we’re all vulnerable. Even worse, just the process of adding the backdoor brings huge new complexities and more opportunities for mistakes – mistakes that attackers can exploit.

The worst part is, most people in government either don’t understand this or they pretend not to. They want the instant backdoor access AND the security encryption provides.

This is why we’re so worried about this. Even well-meaning politicians could make a disastrous mistake here, out of simple ignorance.

This is about the basic integrity of our bank accounts. It’s about protecting people from the pain of having their private photos spilled onto the Internet. But it goes even farther than that…

This past summer, my stomach turned as I read1 about vulnerabilities in over 500,000 cars (!)that let hackers disable engines and brakes, remotely, anonymously, over the cellphone network. Security researchers are barely able to keep us safe as it is; a ban on strong encryption all but guarantees catastrophic attacks.

And there’s one more thing. This may not be important to all of you, but it’s pretty important to us. A few years back, a pretty incredible new innovation came along. It’s called “the blockchain” and it lets engineers build decentralized, free-and-open-source alternatives to centralized corporate monoliths like Paypal, Facebook, Google, Uber, or eBay. That really matters.2

But if governments ban encryption, blockchain technology (which depends on cryptography) would become impossible or illegal. The brilliant young people working on replacing Google or Facebook with something we all control could be thrown in jail, just for building a better Internet.

That’s the dark future that scares me most of all. And I want to do everything I can to prevent it from happening. But we need your help. Can you sign?

Thank you for everything you do,
– Holmes Wilson and the whole Fight for the Future team.

P.S. If this issue is important for you as it is for us, please chip in $5 right now. Not many funders get how big a deal defending crypto is, so Fight for the Future’s ability to do its best work on this issue is in your hands. That said, if you’d like to be involved in funding a larger project, or know someone who might be, be in touch.

For years, governments have held critics of the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in a perfect catch 22. Officials brushed off public outcry and concern by claiming that the dissenters didn’t have all the facts.

This was by design—the 12 country trade deal was negotiated entirely behind closed doors by industry lobbyists and government appointees, and even now the text of the agreement is still classified.

But late last week, WikiLeaks released the final text of the Intellectual Property chapter, meaning those excuses won’t work anymore.

We’re planning to go all out against the TPP, but the first step is to make sure Congress knows just how many people oppose the TPP.

Taking action today is just the beginning, because if all we do is send emails and make phone calls, Congress is not going to reject the TPP. Too many giant industries are seriously invested in making sure Congress ratifies the TPP.

If we’re going to win, we need to go big. Which is exactly what we’re going to do.

Already we have plans to work with hundreds of different groups as a massive coalition to fight the TPP, coordinate gigantic on-the-ground protests in key cities across the country, and produce compelling content to spread the word to as many different audiences as possible just what is at stake in the TPP.

P.S. Want to read the text of the chapter for yourself? Check it out on WikiLeaks here, or read their overview of it here. It’s long and complicated, so maybe you’ll see something that we didn’t. If you do, send us an email.

So many politicians blatantly push for policies that harm all of us, just because the special interests that fund their campaigns want them to.

Because of this, Congress tries to hide — taking vague positions, pushing for watered down legislation, or remaining silent at critical moments.

This week, they’re expected to renew debate on CISA, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, a bill that would give corporations sweeping legal immunity when they share your data with the government.

Now more than ever, it’s so important that we don’t let our lawmakers hide in the shadows.

P.S. As much as we’ve talked about how bad CISA is for expanding mass surveillance, there’s another side to the law that just made it even worse. Late last week, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island introduced an amendment to expand the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the law that has been used time and again to persecute digital activists, including our friend Aaron Swartz. That’s despicable, and needs to be quashed immediately — so take action now to help kill CISA.

Fast Track & the Trans-Pacific Partnership…

This is Insane; How & Why is America Allowing a Trade Treaty to be Negotiated in SECRET? It is so Secret that even— CONGRESS is Kept in the Dark? And soon they have to Vote on it as a ‘FAST TRACK’/ DONE DEAL?

This Issue is so HOT that Hillary Clinton is Hush-Hush About Her Opinion? It Could RUIN her Chance in the 2016 Presidential Election! Remember, her Husband Bill Clinton; Passed the NAFTA Bill in the 1990’s , which sent nearly 700,000 jobs— to Third World Countries for Cheap Labor. THINK Hillary THINK!!!

Thomas Jefferson warned us about— allowing private banks to control currency— “that first by allowing inflation & then deflation, the banks & corporations will grow up around their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

The IRS is a Cartel. The income tax was introduced the same year the Federal reserve was formed in 1913.

“The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the Revolutionary War.” — Ben Franklin